Fre­quency of high-fa­tal­ity mass shoot­ings is ris­ing

A shooter at a bar in Thou­sand Oaks, Cal­i­for­nia, early yes­ter­day mur­dered 12 peo­ple, in­clud­ing a sher­iff’s deputy re­spond­ing to the in­ci­dent. It’s the worst shoot­ing in­ci­dent in the United States in . . . a bit over a week.

There’s an on­go­ing de­bate about whether shoot­ing in­ci­dents gen­er­ally are be­com­ing more fre­quent. The rate of vi­o­lent

lists be­cause of the five peo­ple shot, only two women died.

This has be­come the tragic norm in the United States.

But some­thing does seem to have shifted. Yes, the Park­land ac­tivists were dis­ap­pointed that pro-gun rights can­di­dates won statewide in their home state, but around the coun­try can­di­dates who ran un­apolo­get­i­cally on a gun con­trol mes­sage scored vic­to­ries.

In­stead of shy­ing away from the crime in the United States has dropped sig­nif­i­cantly since the late 1980s and early 1990s and, de­spite some po­lit­i­cal rhetoric, re­mains near all-time lows. But there’s lit­tle ques­tion that the fre­quency of high-fa­tal­ity mass shoot­ings — for our pur­poses, in­ci­dents in which at least 10 peo­ple are killed — has in­creased.

guns is­sue for fear of the pow­er­ful pull of the Na­tional Ri­fle As­so­ci­a­tion, Democrats put it front and cen­ter in their cam­paigns. Es­pe­cially in the sub­urbs — where Democrats saw huge gains.

And yes­ter­day, as news of an­other mass shoot­ing set­tled in, Demo­crat Lucy McBath, a gun­con­trol ad­vo­cate who lost her son in a fa­tal shoot­ing in 2012, sealed her vic­tory in a Ge­or­gia House dis­trict once held by Newt

Mother Jones mag­a­zine has tracked mass shoot­ings since 1982, in­clud­ing any in­ci­dent in which at least four peo­ple were killed. From 1984 to 2004, there was an in­ci­dent in which at least 10 peo­ple were killed about once ev­ery four years. Over the past four years, there have been eight. There have been four such in­ci­dents this year alone.

Gin­grich. McBath, who was in­spired to run af­ter Park­land, ran on her per­sonal story.

“It is un­for­tu­nately not sur­pris­ing that on the very same day I of­fi­cially be­came a con­gress­woman-elect, other fam­i­lies in this coun­try are re­ceiv­ing the same ex­act call that I did six years ago when I learned my son had been mur­dered,” she said in a state­ment.